Dante's Inferno

I've got to admit I felt a little out of place when looking forward to this game; having come out of the blue completely, I felt a 'Dead Space' experience arriving, where I would buy the game on a whim and love it. But to be honest the more I looked forward to this game, the more I hyped it up for myself, the more I replayed the demo, the more I felt it would disappoint me. I have to say straight away: actually it doesn't, and it lived up the high expectations I ended up holding for it, which is a relief, considering most of the games released in this modern market (Call of Duty coming to mind straight away).

The first I have to mention is the story, which is nothing like the book, those of you looking for an accurate adaption of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, are looking in the wrong medium entertainment, try Theatre, Music even, but a game has to be exciting and visceral (no pun intended). So Visceral Games (or Redwood Studios as they were during Dead Space; or 'another EA studio pumping out the Simpson's game for every console every five years) set about adapting 'the fifth gospel' into an action-packed, 'serious-arcade' slash-smash-action-rpg-fighting game, so liberties are taken.

Dante is no longer a troubled poet and politician, but rather a sinning Crusader in the Holy army led to Jerusalem in the 13th century and, without spoiling the story, Dante believes his sins are absolved for this 'noble' cause. Of course they aren't or else he wouldn't be in Hell, and those who have played the demo will realise that his love Beatrice (in the book he never actually spends his life with Beatrice but loves her indefinitely) is dragged into Hell for a bargain made, so the story is truly a very loose adaptation; I can guarantee you won't find yourself fainting and conversing with the local sinners, merely deciding the fate of the rest of their after-life.

So, with the story laid down, I can kind of critique it for being so for from the original, but this critique falls flat when you look at what makes an entertaining game, and this game most certainly is that. Although it's not that long (I tried my hardest to stretch out the story and it took me just over 10 hours) the relatively small amount of hours are full of high-octane, visceral (sorry) action and puzzles.

The game-play is smooth, silky smooth, in fact you can attack with the scythe, pulling off crazy combos and it will never lag, and it looks mind-bendingly good. Visceral Games boast that the game-play never drops below 60 frames a second, and it's hard to believe how they managed it with such lush level design and complex graphics. And then I thought, the whole game is very linear, in fact you don't control the camera at all because there is so little space for exploration. So very small levels, without huge spanning environments mean that bucket loads of shoe polish can be applied to what is actually there, and do you know what? I don't care.

The experience detracts any need for mass exploration; there is nothing worse, in my mind, than traipsing field after boring field to find something that I really couldn't care about. Finding enemies, and bosses and puzzles in this game really grabs your attention and drags you in. I can safely say I never really felt the need to want to go and explore everywhere I could see, I just wanted the action. Many can criticise this game for being too simple-minded, like the drunken brute in the pub, but it really isn't. It's straight to the point and every hour of the game is full of something to do, you'll never be trudging back to NPCs or mindlessly shooting respawning enemies.

No. This is arcade fighting, with updated graphics, updated morality choices, loads of RPG elements and a story line we care about. And you will want to play on, even if it's not to see the newer enemies, or for the greater challenge, or to follow the story, it could be simply for the level design

Every single level is so drastically different, and that is where the game is very accurate in its portrayal of the book. The design is taken straight from literature it is based on; most of the game looks how I imagined it. I can safely say that if you want an intense arcade fighter with all the graphical complexity and RPG element upgrades, with spectacular level design, monstrous bosses and Biblically smooth game-play, this is a game you will enjoy.

Dante's Inferno is primarily an action-adventure fighting game played from a third-person view - similar to Devil May Cry or Bayonetta - with platforming and environment-based puzzles thrown in to break up some of the levels. You control Dante, armed with Death's scythe a Holy Cross that fires a volley of energy as a projectile attack, and magic based attacks, you must journey through the nine circles of Hell to reclaim the soul of your beloved Beatrice from the hands of Lucifer.

I approached this game with a relatively open mind. I've never played the God Of War games (which I hear Dante's Inferno has `borrowed' heavily from), but I'd enjoyed other fighting games such as Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and Castlevania. I liked the look of the art style, the demo was good fun, so I picked it up.

The first thing that struck me was the presentation, the good voice acting and the fluid combat. It didn't seem too challenging to be able to clear hordes of enemies with a few simple button presses. As a fan of horror, I found the presentation of the environments even more impressive Dante descended into hell..... but then things started to unravel a little....

The art style that started off so impressively, and remained so, did become quite samey as the story progressed. A later level set in a forest helped to break up the presentation, but many of the other levels are simply a series of similar-looking corridors that lead into open rooms to allow for an inevitable onslaught of baddies. The environmental puzzles were fun to start with, but boil down to turning levers, switiching switches, or moving blocks, and seem thrown in just to give you something else to do other than kill things. These sections are also hampered by frequently bad camera angles which often lead to unfair trial-by-error deaths. I found the combat in the earlier levels was frustrating, but it took a little perseverance and practice. Ultimately I found the combat to be one of the most rewarding and fair systems I've encountered in this genre, and the skill-tree that you can use to upgrade Dante's abilities was well thought out - do you upgrade your evil powers which improve your scythe attacks, or do you upgrade your good powers which improve your long-range cross attacks? Sure, it is no match for Bayonetta's outrageousness, but the fighting engine is solid and fair, and it is one of the few systems which really made me want to push myself to improve my skills and beat the opponents, rather than slam the joypad down in anger when I was defeated.

I played through Dante's Inferno on the default difficultly so my views are based on a complete 10-12 hour playthrough. Overall I recommend Dante's Inferno, but there are some minor points that detracted from my enjoyment. If you're a fan of fighting games and have a penchant for the grotesque, this is well worth a look.

I, like many, was put off this game at release by some pretty average reviews. Some sites like CVG gave it excellent reviews, but overall it only got an average of about 7.7/10. I must say that I am completely at a loss to understand why. What an action-packed, brilliantly designed, brilliantly gory, gorgeous slash-em-up. True, it may borrow heavily (shamelessly steal) from the likes of the God of War series, but it does it so well. In fact, in most departments it wipes the floor with God of War. As with other games by Visceral (the Dead Space series for example), the graphics and sound design are excellent. It's such a shame that this game went under most people's radar. If you love games and don't mind a gallon or two of blood, you owe it to yourself to buy this game!